Bucs Lose 3-14

Well...that was certainly ugly. I'll give up a detailed analysis in the Game Review, but I think a few key comments here are worth noting. First, the defense gave up 300+ yards rushing. That was absolutely ridiculous. They over pursued, miss tackled, and generally looked slow and out of place on numerous occasions. Of course, Derrick scored a TD only to have the refs take it away for a totally BS block in the back call. That score would have made this a game and the Bucs might have had a shot at winning this game, but we'll never know. Also, the first TD scored by the Falcons came after a BS pass interference call that set them up around the goal line. That's a 14 point swing.

On offense, the Bucs really sucked at times. Simms looked horrendous early, but managed to get it back together enough to help drive the Bucs down into scoring range several times only to have bad things happen (a pick, missed FG, arghh!!). Simms continued to have batted balls early in the game, mostly occurring on 3 step drops again. The line played well, especially in pass protection. But what really irks me is the play calling. First, we only ran the ball 15 times while throwing it 53 times, despite the fact that the final score was the same at half-time. Then, it took too many drives before Gruden finally stopped calling so many 3 step drops and started letting Simms drop back further and letting his OL do their job. Simms had protection all day, and was able to move the ball well with the deeper drops. But then Gruden stopped calling runs, and the Falcons just started dropping more guys in the secondary to tighten up the coverage. The bigger plays Simms had came after a run or two by Caddy. This makes two straight games that Gruden has abandoned the run too early in the game.

Simms is getting a ton of heat for this game, and it's mostly justified, but Gruden didn't put him in the best of position to win for much of the game. This is despite the fact they came out running and had success moving down the field, only to stall and then miss the field goal attempt. Then Gruden's commitment to the run faded. What can you do? Gruden needs to go into the Panthers game with two goals: 1) run the ball 25+ times in the game no matter what and 2) limit the number of 3 step drops allowing Simms a chance to burn the secondary without having the ball batted back down or tipped into the air. If he doesn't do those two things, we aren't going to win, and we'll be in a deep hole right off the bat, with, really, no realistic chance at the playoffs. Ugh.